Turnitin controversy reaches Brock
Travis Lowry
Issue date: 3/9/04 Section: News
A taskforce of Brock students was initiated at a Senate meeting last week to look into alternatives to the use of anti-plagiarism Web sites such as Turnitin.com.
Official as of Wednesday, Mar. 3, the Committee on Academic Policy approved a motion suggested by student senator and fourth year student Charles Hill - to form a taskforce to investigate alternatives to the policy of using Turnitin.com, whether the policy is legal or not, and broadly looking at the ethics of this policy.
Turnitin.com is an anti-plagiarism Web site professors can utilize that takes in student essays and compares them against a huge library of previously submitted work in order to crack down on possible theft of intellectual material.
"The committee thought it would be appropriate to look at the whole broader issue of how these new technologies, of opportunity and monitoring them fit into the whole policy structure at the university," said Senate Chairman John Lye.
Hill was prompted by an instance last winter at McGill where a student was nearly kicked out of school for directly handing in his paper to his teacher rather than submitting it to Turnitin.com.
"What really inspired me to make sure this is brought to the next level was because Jesse Rosenfeld from McGill ... was going to take this [issue] to court but McGill withdrew their policy of using this," said Hill. "McGill has obviously found alternatives to it or they wouldn't have dropped their policy."
Hill said that the use of the Web site is a threat to students because they are forced to give up copyright to their intellectual properties when they submit their work into Turnitin.com. Hill also questions teachers' motives behind the use of the site, as well as the efficiency of the software the site uses. As Turnitin.com increases licensing fees when they get more submissions to compare other papers to, Hill also said that Brock is essentially driving up the cost to use the service because they are over-using it.
Official as of Wednesday, Mar. 3, the Committee on Academic Policy approved a motion suggested by student senator and fourth year student Charles Hill - to form a taskforce to investigate alternatives to the policy of using Turnitin.com, whether the policy is legal or not, and broadly looking at the ethics of this policy.
Turnitin.com is an anti-plagiarism Web site professors can utilize that takes in student essays and compares them against a huge library of previously submitted work in order to crack down on possible theft of intellectual material.
"The committee thought it would be appropriate to look at the whole broader issue of how these new technologies, of opportunity and monitoring them fit into the whole policy structure at the university," said Senate Chairman John Lye.
Hill was prompted by an instance last winter at McGill where a student was nearly kicked out of school for directly handing in his paper to his teacher rather than submitting it to Turnitin.com.
"What really inspired me to make sure this is brought to the next level was because Jesse Rosenfeld from McGill ... was going to take this [issue] to court but McGill withdrew their policy of using this," said Hill. "McGill has obviously found alternatives to it or they wouldn't have dropped their policy."
Hill said that the use of the Web site is a threat to students because they are forced to give up copyright to their intellectual properties when they submit their work into Turnitin.com. Hill also questions teachers' motives behind the use of the site, as well as the efficiency of the software the site uses. As Turnitin.com increases licensing fees when they get more submissions to compare other papers to, Hill also said that Brock is essentially driving up the cost to use the service because they are over-using it.
